1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the use and processing of interactive television data for delivering enhanced television programming in a CATV environment.
2. Background Information
The Advanced Television Enhancement Forum (ATVEF) was formed in 1997 by a consortium of 14 leading companies in the television and computing industries. This group developed a public, worldwide specification for creating and delivering interactive TV (ITV) content. In 1999, the ATVEF Specification v1.1, r26 was finalized and published. The ATVEF Specification serves as a standard for creating enhanced, interactive television content and delivering that content to a range of television, set-top, and PC-based receivers. The ATVEF Specification uses existing Internet technologies to deliver enhanced TV programming over both analog and digital video systems using terrestrial, cable, satellite and Internet networks. The ATVEF Specification can be used in both one-way broadcast and two-way video systems, and is designed to be compatible with all international standards for both analog and digital video systems.
Thus, with the advent of ATVEF and digital cable TV, a new era in TV viewing experience is emerging in which video complementary data services are available to the TV viewer. There are many potential methods for experiencing these data services. One such way is to use a second display screen on an auxiliary display device. One example of an auxiliary display device is a webpad, which is a relatively small remote wireless device.
FIG. 1 shows a conventional two-screen digital cable TV system 100. The system 100 includes an auxiliary display device 105 which communicates with a digital set-top box (STB) 110 (also referred to as a “local device”) using a wireless connection. The wireless connection utilizes an external port 115 on the STB 110, such as a Universal serial bus (USB), Ethernet, or IEEE 1394 port equipped with an access point 120 that communicates with the auxiliary display device 105 over a wireless radio frequency (RF) link 125. The access point 120 in this scenario is a device designed for a specific interface (e.g., USB) and is used to support wireless connectivity. The auxiliary display device 105 may also be connected directly to a high-speed cable modern, digital subscriber (DSL) modem or any other high-speed Internet connection device to access the Internet 135. TV video programming 140 is accessible via STB 110. Typical wireless connection protocols that may be used by TV system 100 include, but are not limited to, HomeRF® and IEEE 802.11. A more traditional wired connection simply includes a cable or wire between the STB 110 and the auxiliary display device 105, again using a USB, Ethernet, or IEEE 1394 port. The STB 110 is also connected to a television 130.
The two-screen digital cable TV system 100 allows for many enhanced capabilities over a one-screen system. For example, a user can view Internet data on the screen of the auxiliary display device 105, while watching video uninterrupted on the television 130. In another example, STB applications that are normally viewed on the television screen, are viewed on the screen of the auxiliary display device 105, leaving the television 130 available for video program viewing.
In a CATV system, an electronic program guide (EPG) is a specific example of an application that can be interacted with through an application running on a second screen device, such as auxiliary display device 105. An EPG is used by a viewer to determine what programs are available for viewing on a television, at what time the programs will be broadcast, and on which channels, More sophisticated EPGs display supplemental information used by the viewer to determine whether the program is suitable for young children, what actors are in the program, how long the program is, and what the program is about. Normally in an EPG, an individual windowed portion is allocated for each program displayed. Viewers of CATV programs use a GUI to navigate an EPG and select program windows in the EPG that are of particular interest.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,130,726 (Darbee et al.) discloses a remote control display unit which selects programming shown on a television and stores program guide software in a memory. Upon actuation of one or more keys on the remote unit, a program guide, advertising and/or other supplemental content contained in a data set is displayed on a screen of the remote unit. A program guide or content scheduling guide stored in the remote unit may be updated on a periodic basis. Internet addresses may also be manually entered using an “EZ NAV key.”
The remote control display unit disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,130,726 displays information associated with a program channel tuned by the actuating keys on the remote unit. If a device other than the remote unit (e.g., an STB, a television) is used to change programming shown on a television, the supplemental content displayed on the remote unit will not be updated to correspond to the current channel. Thus, U.S. Pat. No. 6,130,726 does not disclose an auxiliary display device that changes supplemental content displayed by the auxiliary display device in response to receiving current channel information from a local device, such as an STB and/or television.
With an EPG or similar type of application running on a second display screen device, it is desirable to present Internet content associated with Internet server destinations associated with current programming channel selections, while at the same time tuning the channel. Such a feature provides a medium for companies to advertise their products and/or services on the second display screen device without having to pay the higher costs of directly broadcasting on a television channel that provides programming.
Currently, ATVEF requires that the content provider (e.g., “The Discovery Channel”) supply “special” data within the signal of the programming channel that directs the user to a particular web site. For example, URL data may be encoded within the content of a television program. Thus, the auxiliary display device 105 receiving the content must be capable of extracting and decoding the URL data. This process is deficient because it does not account for providers who do not supply URL data. Furthermore, the process does not account for auxiliary display devices that are not compatible, and thus unable to receive, extract and/or decode the ATVEF data.